Below you can see my PowerPoint presentation which goes through my original idea for a music video, which ended up not being chosen. But you can still see it below. 

Another thing I did a few weeks ago was I made a list of ideas for the music video. You can see them below.

• We should have some way of making it clear that the video is about a drug addiction.
• I’ve thought we could have a shot of someone desperately getting lots and lots of stuff (in the story they will be drugs). We could have this on super speed in the video. I can imagine it could be used as a shot in the ‘Show me your love’  chorus.
• I also thought that when he’s in the studio singing ‘Show me your love’ we should have the red lighting because red is often the colour used to indicate love. We could also have a video effect where we include hearts flying around throughout the chorus. This could be an effective way to make it fun to watch.
• We should use something as a prop for drugs. I could bring in some of my tablets.
• Use electric guitars and drums as props for the band in the video.

Below you can see some work I did before we started working on the music video. This was when I was asked to research into three different music videos which used a music video to tell a story with a clear narrative. You can read it below.

Green Day: “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams” – [Official Video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Soa3gO7tL-c

The song was written by Tré Cool, Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt. It was performed by the band Green Day. I only noticed one form of band promotion in the video. It in the scene where the band was playing their music: there was a drum kit with the ‘Green Day’ logo on it which is a clear way of promoting the band.

The song seems to be about a man that is completely alone in the world. He mentions how his shadow is the only one who walks besides him. One of the lyrics has him saying, “Sometimes I wish someone would come and find me, but till then I walk alone”. I think this does give the impression that he wishes he wasn’t so lonely but does still accept the reality.

There are also several different camera shots throughout the video. We get close ups of his face with a very neutral expression which doesn’t show a great deal of emotion one way or another, which also fits with feeling of  emptiness that the artist is trying to portray. It’s also clear that the choice of locations used throughout the video all look quite deserted. The video has also been digitally edited to make it look like it has film damage, which is also meant to make us believe it’s filmed with a very old camera so maybe the song’s protagonist is quite poor and can’t afford anything more.

 

The Christmas Shoes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpkI7GW2V34

This is a song written by Eddie Carswell and performed by the band New Song. The video has a few credits at the end of the as well as in the description which aim to make everyone aware of the artist and songwriter.

This music video is shown from the perspective of a shop customer behind a boy who desired to buy some shoes for his mother who was dying of a serious illness. He wanted to give them to her as a gift in the very little amount of time that she had.

This video is so effective because it shows the story through the use of video footage and the lyrics guide the audience as to what’s going on. The story is also very easy to follow and the tune is so emotional I literally can’t watch it without getting goosebumps.

It uses various different shots and camera angles throughout the film which are used to help the audience empathise with the characters and help us to feel like we’re there. It uses certain shots to help enhance our emotions. For example: when the boy is telling the shop owner to hurry because his mother doesn’t have long left, we can see the emotion and panic on his face. This along with the music really helps us to feel strong sympathy for the boy and really want him to be able to get the shoes. You can see a shot of the scene below. You can just see the emotion and passion in the  boys face.

 

Let It Go/Let Her Go (Frozen/Passenger MASHUP) – Sam Tsui

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoBELyv9cgk

This music video is made by the fairly famous YouTuber, Sam Tsui. It’s a cover of Let it Go from Frozen mashed up with Let her Go by Passenger. The way the artist combines both songs makes it unique and stand out from others.

There are a few methods used to promote the artist. One example there is a link on the video all the way through it that links to his Channel. It has his logo available to click. At the end of the video, the artist asks everyone to subscribe to his Channel and lets them know about his upcoming video. He also gives his twitter account a mention.

He uses different shots throughout the video. He uses close up shots, mid shots and other shots that switch from himself to the piano. There are even some hints of shaky cam. This helps keeps the audience interested and makes the video more interesting to watch. The song isn’t as emotional and full of feels as the previous music video but they do still feature close up shots of the singer, which helps show his passion with what he sings.

Below you can see my reflection diary on the music video I did. I added to this each time I worked on the music video from the earliest stages. 

 

Here is the treatment I worked on for the music video. I wrote this a few weeks ago before we did any filming. So some of the ideas for the film we initially had didn’t make it into the final video. 

Working title – Don’t do drugs

Genre – It’s a music video with the main genres being pop punk, alternative rock and pop rock.

Duration – 2 minutes in length… One half will be focussed on the TV studio with the music video and the other half will focus more on the plot and story.

Target audience – The music video will be aimed at 14-20 year olds, prominently males, but it can be good for females as well. I would say this age range is most likely to fall into the trap of getting addicted to drugs. I would also aim it at people of middle class and working class background. See the links below.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/principles-adolescent-substance-use-disorder-treatment-research-based-guide/introduction

https://www.drugwise.org.uk/prevalence-drugs/

Outline – The music video is about a young man who goes on drugs. A drug dealer sells him drugs. To begin with, he seems unaffected by them and absolutely loves the drugs. He even says in the song, “If you’re going to be the death of me that’s how I want to go”, which means he’s willing to risk his own life for his love of drugs. At the end of the video, he will look in the restroom mirror and see his nose bleed which shows the audience something of the danger that drugs can bring.

Character breakdown – The main character is a British male in his late teens  named Peter. He is a college student but has no paid job. As well as this, he has a lot of issues with his family and experiences high levels of depression and low self esteem. He was having such a hard time they he turned to drugs because he felt it was the only way to find peace in life and prevent him from having suicidal thoughts.

Visual elements –

• Lighting – In the studio, we had a rather dark room with different colour gels on the lighting. We made the room look red.
• Camera movement – Mid shots, close up shots, angle shots, pan shots, etc.

• Editing –  I intend to use various different editing techniques. I aim to edit different camera angles of Ryan’s lip syncing and sync them with the original song. I also hope to use things like fast motion and slow motion when they’re appropriate.
• Setting – TV studio, bathroom and Wrexham town.
• Actors – Ryan is playing the singer and his friend Tyler will be playing the drug addict.
• Props – We plan to use fake blood for Ryan’s nose bleed, along with some props for drugs.
• Costumes – regular clothes.

Audio elements – We will have the same song in the background throughout the whole video. We won’t be including any other sounds in it.

Rationale – Ryan was the one that chose this idea. I believe it will be used as a great method of raising awareness of the issues that come from drug addictions and how it becomes a real problem. I would personally like to develop my skills when using cameras and other equipment. I don’t always know what to do when something goes wrong, which is something I could do with working on. I need to work on keeping my camera in focus under different lighting conditions.

Primary and secondary research – We looked into similar types of songs and wrote up about them.  I looked up links to back why it fit best with the chosen target audience. We think we might also ask people on social media about the power of music to affect the decisions they make.

Requirements and resources – The video will feature Ryan as well as his friend Tyler. The only equipment we’ve used so far has been the two cameras and red gel lighting. Our filming will take place in the TV studio, the college toilets and Wrexham town.

Constraints and contingency – Potential barriers that could get in the way are things like Ryan not being able to turn up, some of our footage ending up out of focus and the fact that we have to rely on Ryan’s friend Tyler to turn up. If he doesn’t,  we will have to find someone else willing to step in.

 

Below you can watch the Music video my team and I have worked on. This is my own edit of the video. It aims to raise awareness of the dangers to drug addictions. The song is not our own. All credit for the song goes to the band, ‘Panic! At the Disco’. 

Read the evaluation of the video below.

We started filming in the TV studio. We filmed Ryan lip-singing to ‘Panic of the Disco’. I was recording it with a DSLR camera and Matt filmed it with the professional camera in the TV studio. I had a hard time getting the camera completely in focus with the red lighting we had. However, I did get it as in focus as possible, but it was hard to tell how good it would be from the small camera screen. Regardless, I really enjoyed recording Ryan’s lip-singing and I couldn’t wait to dub it with the song.   

When I finally came to import all the DSLR footage a college iMac, I found that the picture quality looked a little bit out of focus. I tried getting it in focus on the day but couldn’t seem to get it any better than I had it but I didn’t realise how bad it was till I started editing it. I don’t have the problem when I film in a setting with normal lighting, but when it’s dark with red lighting; it’s much harder to get it in perfect focus. I decided I had to book the studio with Phil at some point and work on getting it in focus. However, I later found out that DSLR’s in general do seem to have that problem in that kind of lighting and the way to resolve it is by changing the ISO settings which I’ll have to do next time. I’ve also found out that you  can actually get the footage on a TV screen at the same time as when you’re recording on camera. This would really help with recognising when it’s not completely in focus.

However, luckily, the footage from the TV studio camera was 1000,000 times better so it wasn’t a total loss. I decided to only use that footage and I did a pretty good job at getting Ryan’s lip singing in sync with the original song.

The following week, my group continued working on the music video, but unfortunately I was off sick that week so I didn’t get the chance to do the filming, but other members in my group did and they sent over the recorded footage for me to edit. I spent two days editing all the footage together and had a lot of fun doing this.

When I first saw all the footage: I wasn’t entirely sure on how I should incorporate the new footage in with the old. I noticed there were a couple of scenes planned that didn’t make it into the filming. I asked Ryan for some advice (since it was his idea to make the film) and he showed me his edit which I found very helpful to simply give me an idea of the kind of thing to work on. I’m told that some of the plans had to change, due to inconvenience.

For example – there was originally going to be a scene of the drug addict looking into the restroom mirror and seeing blood come out of his nose. This was meant to illustrate the extreme dangers of the addiction. This scene couldn’t be filmed because they couldn’t get hold of any fake blood.When I first looked at all the footage, I was a bit confused as to why this scene didn’t seem to there. I even thought maybe I didn’t have some of the footage (it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened) but I soon came to realise it was nothing to fear.

I’ve finally received my feedback from the tutors for my work on the film with the message and my other work for Unit 6. They use a system of up to 4 points to mark someone’s work. See the details below.

Most of my work was marked in the ‘Pass-Good’ section which is quite pleasantly surprising. I would have expected at least a few things to come into the ‘Referral’ section but this wasn’t the case. However, this doesn’t change the fact that there is still room for improvement and I should more things in the ‘Excellent’ section by the time I’m in my final module.

One thing I was told was that I had “Effective planning, organisation and subject engagement evidenced. Efficient production against timescales.”. I must say this shocked me quite honestly! I really am absolutely dreadful at planning and thinking ahead. So much so that I would have thought this would be in the red or least the orange, so I’m quite pleased it’s in the light green. However, it’s obvious that it’s still not as good as it could be and there is a lot of improvements to be made. I need to work on m ability to plan and organise my work. When I start production, I don’ always for-see potential barriers and problems which can happen when filming. 

I know thinking ahead is a very broad term and it’s hard to come up with one set way in which I should improve. However, one good goal would be to think every thing through in future story boards. When I make my next story board, I should take pictures of every frame and every thing that happens so we can see potential things that can go wrong.

One comment that was marked under ‘satisfactory’ was, “Competent demonstration of processes and application of skills and knowledge used to develop & present creative solutions.” 

I think that in my future projects I could really benefit from making sure my camera is on the appropriate ISO settings to get the best picture quality. As well as this, I think that whenever we’re having actors with lines of dialogue, we should use the zoom kit, instead of the camera’s audio recorder.

I hope to take these points into consideration for my final FMP.

 

 

I worked on a musicless music video that you can watch by scrolling down. I used the Green Day video, “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams” as my song choice.

When I came to make the music video, I used a mix of various different sound effects including those that I both downloaded and created. I created the ones I could. I got Phil to play the electric guitar and drums, while I recorded this using the zoom kit in the TV studio . I downloaded some sound effects from the BBC sound effect website. For example – I downloaded a sound effect for slamming the car door. I also downloaded a sound effect to replace the wind we hear at the beginning of the original video and a sound effect for footsteps. I hoped this choice of sound effects would blend well together in the final video. When it came to editing the audio effects together with the footage, I cut out a lot of the original Greenwood video and only focussed on the parts with the driving, the walking and the playing of music.

It could only be up to 1.5 minutes long so I couldn’t include too much. In the scene where the men are driving, I have the wind effect and something of a car sound effect as well. When they get out of the car the main character kicks the door shut and then gives one of the wheels a kick. I used a ‘slamming door’ sound effect along with a ‘kicking’ sound effect and I think I managed to get them perfectly in sync. When the characters get out of car, they start walking and this when the music starts in the original video. However, I changed it so there was no music in that part. Instead, I used a loud exaggerated sound effect of footsteps through that part. In the original video, the protagonist starts singing about 38 seconds into the video, but in my version, that was when I cut it straight to when they’re in a studio playing their instruments.

When we see the guitar being played in the original, I replaced that audio with my rubbish recording of Phil playing the guitar. When we see the drums being played in the original, that’s when I added my recording of drums. Eventually we had it so that both the guitar and the drum recording were going on at the same time, with the aim for it to sound like a real band – a rubbish band but still a band nonetheless… Once I believed it to be done, I thought it was decent but at the same time there was an issue with it. There were bits with the man clearly opening his mouth like he was singing but we had no sound effect for that. It was suggested that I should have some kind of sound effect for that even if it was something stupid like a dog barking – or something along those lines. I searched the BBC sound effects. I considered the possibility that I could use a child’s voice for it. It would make it really random and bizarre in a funny way. I downloaded a child’s voice online but I struggled to get it to fit with the parts where he sings. Eventually I decided to try to cut out most of the parts where the man sings because it was just too awkward. However, I did include one shot of him singing. When I was recording the guitar and drums being played, there were a few bits of recording where we talked. I included a tiny bit of that dialogue for the video right at the end and I thought it was pretty funny.

Today I worked on a few things. I did the reflected video journal on campaign ideas. We got into our groups and discussed our campaigns. We each recorded a video on what our ideas were, weather or not the group used them and do we feel there is now a clear direction of what your group wants to achieve with their campaign. I recorded this video and then put it on to classroom.

I also started work on the video essay for the musicless music video. About a week ago, I wrote up an essay on this and did a voice recording of it yesterday. Today I started editing the voice recording. I cut out coughs, pauses and other bloopers from the recording. I intend to add images to the recording along with screenshots from my editing of it and footage from the original video. This is my plan and I hope it will look good once it’s finished. This afternoon I’m hoping to start work on Vox Pops interviews. I have to do it with two other students and I’m feeling a bit nervous because I don’t know who to ask, but I still look forward to working on it.

Code Geass film advert

For our upcoming music videos: we’re going to have to create a music video poster about the music video, using Layer. In preparation for this: I started using Layer to get used to the different techniques of layer. I tried making some posters. I started by making my own fan poster for the new Code Geass film. You can see what I did in the screenshot below. I included an image from the film along with a Facebook Like page and the link to the page for it on MAL that you can see here. I also featured the trailer on YouTube on the poster to. The poster is far from perfect but it’s a start.

Stimming fixers project 

Next I tried working on a poster about my Fixers project on the subject of Self stimulatory behaviour (or stimming for short) that you can view here. The project took the form of a comedy sketch that aimed to raise understanding and awareness of autism and stimming. My poster featured the video itself, along with a link to my website, contact number and link to my book.

Alex Lowery speaks about autism 

Both the previous two attempts at posters were okay. However, they really lacked something. They were both in serious need of titles and written information. This was something I couldn’t work out how to do unfortunately. I still haven’t figured out how to add text but I did come up with an alternative which will do for now. I decided to work on the title and written information on Microsoft Word and then take a screenshot of what I did and then upload it to Layer. On top of this, I linked to my Website, my Facebook Like Page, my book on amazon and also gave my contact phone number. I am far more happy with how this poster turned out than I am with the others. It’s much more the way I wanted it. So much so that I really want to publish it, but unfortunately it won’t let me. 😦 It keeps saying it’s analysing and I can’t publish it till it’s finished but the problem is that it doesn’t seem to end. It’s been saying the same thing for days now which is making me worried. I would like to be able to share it around but I worry that I won’t ever be able to do that. Even the tutor is unaware of what the issue is there. I can only hope that it will eventually get resolved.